miss annie - what about those cardboard cut out adverts that stand next to new books in bookshops that advertise new books.say with a picture of the book of the authour or a picture of the book standing about six foot tall in the bookshop that grabs your attention.arent these adverts in the book shop paid for by the publisher or cardboard adverts in the shop window paid for by publishers? this gives new books that might be no good an advantage paid for by publishers surely? or adverts for books in newspapers or other adverts - these paid for by publishers to flog a book.giving a book that maybe no good but by a well known authour publicity

i think martin amis book called "yellow dog" which was described as "not no where to look bad" by a critic ...i wonder how much money bookshops took from publishers to flog that to the public based on martin amis name.

perhaps nepotism plays a part in what book publishers buy ...for example martin amis's first book the rachel papers did not make amis any money for him but won an award ...i wonder if he would have got his book published if his dad was not famous...

how many martin amis novels have been any good recently ? they always seem to be in the shop window...

We don't use those cardboard cutouts of people gurning. The publishers will send them if shops ask for them, I got an Alan Partridge one for a pal's birthday. Posters in our windows don't have pictures of books on - they just have messages, like Valentine's Day with an Emily Bronte quote. Publishers have no input, some book chains may get publishers to pay, I don't know.

miss annie says she  is a bookseller so she wrote "it always makes booksellers think" - so if it always makes booksellers think then it must make miss annie think ie personally question why self published writers were turned down

ps not off to dixie chicken in sg rd  it looks awfull and dare i say it,very common....lowering the tone in sg rd... too many betting shops tooo - perhaps someone can start a thread to explain why we need so many dreadfully common shops and why the council cant ban them...even soba is turning into a fish n chip shop / kebab house...dreadfull really im afraid 

well said Ms Artois...

Hi Stella

The books go in the windows for all the reasons listed above, my personal reading preference accounts for about 10%. The recommends bay is inside the shop. I suppose I imagine that customers will have a look at the recommends, see what jumps out at them, have a good read of the back cover to see if it's their sort of thing and/or have a chat with the person who recommended it, or read a few pages to find out more. I wouldn't expect that anyone would just pick up a book and buy it without at least reading a couple of pages to see if the style was to their taste.

We have *a lot* of regular customers in every dept. who trust our recommendations and consistently choose their books from them or from our feature tables like our cult fiction table, novels in translation table, God debate table  etc. We ask them to let us know if they liked it and what they thought about it, via twitter, email, or in person. Haven't had any complaints yet! Sometimes we ask customers and local authors to write recommendations for books they've enjoyed too. Look out for a selection recommended by Nick Hornby - coming soon.

One of the best things about working in or shopping in a real, physical bookshop is that you can have a jolly good chat or debate about books all day long with a massive variety of people. It's brilliant.

There is a lot on the shelves that I wouldn't read but whether or not it's rubbish is subjective surely? And as to why books get turned down and then suddenly picked up seems to be purely based on a book being succesful and then publishers searching for anything and everything similar. Scandi crime is now a massive genre due to the popularity of Stieg Larsson's books opening the floodgates. Boy Called It paved the way for endless 'misery memoirs, and the new craze is fiction which reads like a quirky indie film or a Tim Burton movie. There are a few of those coming for the spring.

Seriously impressed at the quality of the fiction I've read in advance of Sunday's meet!

No, I'm the Stella who was #3 ebook humour charts a few weeks back. ;-)

I didn't have an official book launch yet. That's probably going to happen some time this year. If I ever get around to format the books for print.

I'd love to. As long as I don't have to read anything. But even for that I might have a solution ;-)

Would probably wet myself and stammer incoherently, but once I start talking about my books I'll never stop anyway. See, you will regret to have made this offer...

@Stella,